Conviction Of Woman Who Drowned Her Five Children Overturned
Houston,TX - A Texas Appeals Court has overturned the conviction of Andrea Yates, the woman convicted of drowning her five children in a bathtub. She was previously sentenced to life in prison in March 2002.
The Texas First Court of Appeals based it's ruling on the fact that Dr. Park Dietz testified that Yates may have been influenced by watching an episode of "Law & Order" when in fact no such episode exists.
The conviction was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings. Yates could possibly be released on bail pending a new trial at the discretion of the court.
This woman had a clear history of PD. While what she did was horrible she is not some psycho who is going to do this to random people. PD is a serious condition. I blame the husband for allowing her to have so many kids knowing that such a condition existed and the medical community for not taking her condition seriously. Putting a woman in jail for PD is stupid. She should be given treatment not punishment. She should also be prevented from having any more kids of her own.
This postpartum depression B.S. is just another excuse used by some rip-off lawyer to keep yet another criminal out of jail. These days you can to whatever you want to whomever you want and as long as you had a couple of drinks or used some mind altering drug prior to your heinous crime you will be excused from punishment. I think this b—ch should have her head held under water till she stops blowing bubbles. Oh, by the way, this will also prevent her from “having any more kids of her own”.
Some lawyers use this type of illness as an excuse for crimes committed by someone who does not suffer from it. Unfortunately it works too often.
On the other hand this is a real sickness, a real mental illness, and if someone really does have it then they can't be held responsible for all of their actions. They need help and traetment, not the death penalty which has been called for in this case.
The hard bit is for the Jury to decide who is ill and who is faking...
First off boolie, if you check the source her case had an extensive documented history of this problem. She should never have been having a forth or fifth child it was utter stupidity.
And to xrayu. I would love to know a little more about you. Clearly you have an extensive medical background and a lot of balls to fly in the face of medical reasearch and some of the finest experts in the world. Please share with us some pearls of wisdom and explain to us mere mortals what medical research you did to determine that PD is just a made up condition that lawyers invented to get people out of going to jail.
I just don't understand why people have such a problem believing in chemical problems in the brain causing strange behavior. How many normal women would one day go and drown all her kids and then call the police? Simple logic would state that such behavior is far from normal. This is a sick woman with a documented medical condition that existed years before this incident.
But hey why bother to care. If some woman does something we don't like let's just burn her at the stake or drown her as you suggest. Damn those witches.
Her depression was so bad or well documented, wouldnt or more appropriatly SHOULDNT she have been on some sort of medication? I had my first son young and I had a terrible case of PPD. But it didnt make me wanna hold him under the water. I just didnt want anything to do with him the first few weeks... Thank god my mother was there to help me through that, but I digress... I think PPD is a very real and serious condition, and any woman that has such a sickness should go to her doctor. BUT... When she's obviously coherent enough to blame it on an episode of Law and Order, thats where I'd draw the line from PPD to downright sick and tired of having so many kids running around all day. Just makes more sense that way.
She did not blame an episode of Law And Order. She was accused of copying an episode, however upon research such an episode had never actually been aired.
I just don't think a woman would sit down and decide that she should drown her kids and then call the police and admit to it and try and blame some mental condition. It does not make sense in any logical way.
I just feel that this woman was failed by the medical establishment and her husband and I see her as a victim here.
Tsawyers, not meaning to downplay your PD but just because you've had it doesn't mean you know all about it. I've had mumps as a child, but that doesn't mean I know what it is like for mumps to sever the hearing nerve and leave me profoundly deaf for life. Everyone has a different experience of illness. An illness that kills some people may be survived by others, everyone is different. Surely you can understand having had PD that it could have been worse or different for another woman living in different circumstances with different brain chemistry?
with my two, with the first they thought I was gonna get it and watched me the first few days, and that was just because I didn't want to hold him straight away after I woke from the general I had to have for the emergency section ;)
Normal birth second time round with all the normal emotions.
I agree with ZCT on this one, there should never have been 5 kids to start with and she obviously needed more medical attention than she got.
However, I never stated that I knew everything about it. I simply said that when I did have it, I didnt have the urge to hold him under the water. How someone can do that is beyond me and my heart goes out to those children. *shrug* I know it could have been alot worse...but fortunatly for me it wasnt.
Regardless of the fact that no such Law & Order episode exists, there should still have been more than enough grounds to keep that bitch imprisoned for life or sent to the electric chair for the five drowned kids.
postpartum depression is miserable, it went a long way towards wrecking my entire first year of motherhood. but it doesn't make you kill your kids.
however, a very small percentage of women with PPD worsen into something called postpartum psychosis, which does turn into truly nasty incidents. you start to have uncontrollable thoughts, things like that, it's completely beyond control. that's what andrea yates would have had, it was mentioned in some of the articles around the original trial, but most sources just use PPD because not many people know the difference between the two.
i do not think she should have had that many children, not so close together, not in what was reported to be a situation where she had very little support from her husband. anyone would go a little crazy like that, and the situation probably helped make her PPD take a bad turn into a psychotic snap.
are excuses. So is that BS Law and Order defense(offense?) This case got overturned based upon the opinion of one dumbass shrink? Wonderful. When they drag me away for crimes yet uncommitted, I'll blame it on Alfred Prufrock. At the appeal, they'll find he doesn't exist, that he was just a creation in some prose, and then I'll be set free. It's bulletproof.
Why are American's so hell bent on eye for an eye revenge instead of looking for a solution to these problems. We have more people in jail per capita than any other civilized country and our crime rate still sucks. Ever consider that a different approach might be needed.
Someone once said that the definition of stupid was repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting different results.
This woman was mentally sick. She had a medically documented problem yet there are people calling for her torture or death. I wonder what is wrong with a society so into punishment and retribution.
This woman drowned ALL FIVE OF HER CHILDREN. Honestly, how many sane people would do that? She wasn't going to get something out of their deaths, she did not try to say "it wasn't me." Hell, the police didn't even have to look for her. This woman is obviously insane and should be put in a mental hospital for the rest of her life. Why would you want to execute an insane, irrational human being? This is not her trying to escape punishment for what she's done; this is about getting help for someone that is in dire need of it.
I also heard that she had been warned that she needed to get help many times before but her husband did not take her to get help and left her alone with her kids for hours on end. The fact that she even had five kids so close together was insanity on the part of the family and ultimately this woman is paying the price. Even if she is released, does anyone think she will ever be happy?
